The Night People (12 page)

“I don’t like this, Kane. I want to come along.”

“Then the police would follow us all. They’re right in that car across the square.”

“Kane, Kane! You’re getting in deeper all the time!”

He squeezed her hand and turned to follow Green into the depths of the dimly lit church. They walked quickly down the side aisle, past kneeling figures in black shawls, until they reached a woman alone before a bank of flickering multicolored vigil lights.

“Maria,” Green whispered.

The girl turned, and even in the dim light Kane was struck by her youthful beauty. He hadn’t expected it to be a girl. But then, what had he expected? “Is this the witness?” he asked Green.

“Yes. Her name is Maria. That’s all you need to know. She comes from the village and she was a neighbor of Ramon Mandown. Do you have the money?”

Kane took out some American bills and slipped them, crumpled, to Green. “Where can we talk?”

The bearded man looked around. “Right here. What better place than a church?”

“Then why couldn’t Doris come in too?”

“Wives are nothing but trouble. Even if you start out loving them, it can turn to hate in a lifetime of sameness.”

Kane said nothing, wondering if the comment went with Green’s line of business. He knelt beside the girl and saw Green kneel behind them.

“Tell me about Ramon Mandown,” he said, keeping his voice almost to a whisper in the stillness of the church.

Maria started to speak, keeping her eyes on the altar. “He was a good man,” she said, “good to me when I was only a child. Sometimes he would give candy to us, to my sisters and brothers. I never read any of his poems until after he died. I think they’re beautiful.”

“How did he die, Maria?”

“I remember the night,” she continued, still staring at the altar. “I’d been out, and when I came home I saw them going into Ramon’s house.”

“Who?”

“Juan Vyano, the headman. And many others. All of them angry.”

“Ramon was dead?”

“No, he was still alive then. I saw him in the doorway.”

“How many persons were there?”

“Vyano and eleven others. I remember counting them. There was Hernando, and Miller, and Jose, and the shoemaker, and the barber, and the Quan brothers, and I forget who else. After they were in the house for a long time I heard the shots.”

“Shots?”

She nodded. “When they killed Ramon Mandown.”

Vyano and eleven others, Kane stared hard at the flickering vigil lights. “You mean they all killed him? The whole village?”

“Those that were there. Vyano and the others. I’ve been afraid to say, but his poems were so beautiful I had to tell someone. I told Green the bookseller.”

A girl’s statement, but he needed more evidence. “Do you know where they buried him?”

She nodded. “I know the place.”

“Take me there.”

Green leaned over between them. “That was not in the agreement. Another hundred dollars for the location of the grave.”

Kane hesitated only a moment. He was too close to the truth to stop now. “All right. Right now?”

But Green answered, “Tonight, just after dark. Meet me here. I’ll have Maria with me. Now go, before the police grow suspicious. And don’t bring your wife tonight. It might be dangerous.”

He was already heading for the side door, clutching the young girl’s wrist to pull her along. Kane wondered if he would really find the grave for his two hundred dollars, or if he would only find the bottom of a ditch somewhere while Green and the girl named Maria robbed him of the rest of his money. He was not gullible enough to believe a man like Green completely, and yet there had been a fantastic ring of truth in the girl’s story.

“You took long enough,” Doris said when he’d rejoined her. Across the street, the police car was not in sight.

“It was time well spent. I talked to a girl who practically witnessed Mandown’s killing, and she’s going to show me the grave tonight.”

“Kane, where is this all going to end?”

“I won’t be satisfied until I can write the truth about Mandown’s death.”

“If the police see you with Green again …”

“They won’t. That’s why we’re waiting until tonight. And, once we’re up in the hills Pallato can’t follow us. He said it was outside his territory. We should be safe.”

“I’m not going up there with you.”

“I don’t want you to, dear. I didn’t want you to come along here. Wait for me at the hotel.”

“Be careful, Kane.”

The night was starless as a blanket of clouds settled heavily over the region. Kane sat huddled in the front seat of Harry Green’s car, wondering for the first time if Ramon Mandown were really worth it all. Seated here between Green and the girl named Maria, he was not nearly as sure of things as he had been by daylight. The old doubts about Green’s motives asserted themselves once again. After all, he knew the man as a pornographer and a revolutionary—which were hardly traits to inspire confidence on a dark night. He thought of the ditch again, and was thankful he’d left most of his money back at the hotel.

“We’re nearly there,” Green said. “Do you have the other hundred dollars?”

“Of course. Does Maria get it?”

Green gave a harsh laugh. “Don’t be foolish. She wouldn’t know what to do with it. Would you, dear girl?”

Maria, obviously uneasy, shifted in her seat. “I only want to help, to tell the truth about Ramon Mandown.” After a few moments’ silence, she said, “Stop right here.”

Green pulled the car off the road, its headlights pointing out a little weed-strangled graveyard by the side of a church. Kane stared through the darkness with distaste. “It doesn’t look like it’s been used in a hundred years.”

“This is the place,” the girl insisted, hopping out of the car on her side. Kane and Green followed her. She led them up a rise of soft damp ground, past tumbled tombstones that caught and held the glow from Harry Green’s flashlight. “Here!”

It was a low grave, a sunken rectangle of earth and grass with only a simple stone marker flat against the earth.
Ramon Mandown
—
Carla Mandown.
Only that, without dates. Kane read the words, and his heart beat faster.

“Should we dig them up?” Green asked.

“For another hundred dollars?” Kane knew that, much as he might want to, he could never desecrate the great poet’s grave. Perhaps fifty years from now someone might open it, but not yet.

Harry Green shifted the flashlight to his other hand. “There’s somebody coming,” he said.

A powerful spotlight cut through the night from the direction of the road, pinning them in its path. “Green!” a voice shouted.

The bearded man’s hand came out of his pocket, holding a tiny automatic pistol. But he was blinded by the light, and before he could take aim the muffled splatter of an automatic weapon split the damp night air. Harry Green toppled backward over a gravestone, and Maria started screaming.

As the light turned toward him, Kane dived behind the gravestone too and felt in the grass for Green’s fallen gun. Up on the road there were men talking, at least two of them. One was unmistakably Captain Pallato. After a moment’s frantic searching, Kane’s fingers closed around the gun. He aimed it at the light, and then thought better of it. He was no hero, and their weapons could spray the entire area with bullets.

The girl’s screams had settled into a dull sobbing as she scampered away among the gravestones. Kane put a hand on Green’s chest, searching for a heartbeat, but there was only gently pulsating blood, coming from a line of massive wounds. If the bearded man was still alive, death was very close. Kane gave it up and hurried after the girl. Behind him, he could hear Pallato and the others moving in to inspect their kill.

Kane caught Maria back in the woods, grabbing her arm and pulling her to him. “I won’t hurt you,” he whispered harshly, aware that his actions hardly fitted the words.

“They killed him,” she sobbed.

“It was Captain Pallato. Was Pallato one of the twelve men who called on Mandown that night?”

“No—no. They were all from the village.”

“Can you take me to Juan Vyano’s house?” Suddenly he remembered that his right hand was still clutching Harry Green’s gun. Without thinking, he dropped it into his pocket. Green would have no further use for it.

She led him through thick underbrush, avoiding main roads, until they were in the more populated area that Kane remembered from his earlier visit. “That is his house,” she said, pointing toward a pinpoint of light that came from a nearby window.

“Thank you, Maria. Go home now, and tell nobody what happened. You’ve seen more than your share of death, and it may be dangerous for you.”

He hovered by the side window of the house until he saw Juan Vyano appear in the circle of light. Then he stepped onto the rickety porch and knocked at the door. When Vyano opened it, Kane showed him the gun. “I want to talk to you,” he said. “This is just for my protection.”

Vyano stepped aside to let him enter. “You hardly need it here.”

“I’ve been shot at already tonight.”

“You are the man from the cemetery yesterday—the one who asked the questions.”

“And got a lot of wrong answers to them. You said Mandown’s grave was unmarked, and I’ve just come from looking at it.”

Juan Vyano hesitated, running a damp hand through his graying hair. “Who took you there?”

He decided not to mention Maria. “An American named Harry Green. He was followed to the cemetery by a policeman named Captain Pallato, and shot down in cold blood.”

Vyano nodded sadly. “Green was an evil man. I suppose he deserved it.”

“He thought he’d be safe from Pallato outside of Puerto Vale,” Kane said.

“He was safe from Pallato only
in
Puerto Vale. The police captain could not kill him like that in his own territory, but as soon as Green left the city, Pallato must have seen his chance to do what the courts could not do.”

“Is that the way of justice here?”

The man shrugged. “It is the way of public safety. Green corrupted the youth and subverted the adults. Pallato did the right thing.”

Kane held the gun steady. They were standing in the center of the shabby room, seeing each other only by the light from the single naked bulb that burned in one corner. It might have been a poor man’s home, except for the bookcase of expensive volumes along one wall. Kane wondered if any of them were Green’s special stock. “What about Mandown?” he asked. “I suppose you did the right thing with him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ramon Mandown was murdered.”

“That would be difficult for you to prove.”

“Give me a shovel and I’ll dig up the grave. You know what I’d find. Skeletons can still show bullet holes.”

“There is no need for that,” Vyano said quietly. He shifted his position slightly and Kane brought up the gun.

“You admit they were both shot?”

“Yes,” he said reluctantly.

“You went there, Vyano. You and eleven other men from the village. Did you eat a last meal with him, listen to the great man’s words one last time before you all killed him?”

Juan Vyano closed his eyes for a moment, with something like an ultimate sadness. “You do not understand the way we live here. You are a stranger from a strange land.”

“I understand that Ramon Mandown had a sort of greatness you couldn’t comprehend here. I understand that you killed him for it.”

“Killed a man because he was intelligent and famous and saw poetic beauty in these poor valleys? Is that what you think?”

“That’s what I’ll tell the world when I get back. That’s what I’ll write about.”

“Are you married, sir?”

“I’m on my honeymoon.”

“Then you are too young to understand. Too lacking in worldly experience.”

“I understand murder. I understand Harry Green shot down in a graveyard. I understand Mandown and his wife in their grave together.”

Juan Vyano sighed. “Do you really think Mandown was a great man?”

“Of course.”

“Then put away your gun. I will tell you the truth, and you will never print it.”

Kane stared hard into the bleak eyes. “What truth do you mean?”

“The truth about Ramon Mandown’s death. You see, we didn’t hate him for his fame. We tried to protect that fame, and we succeeded until you came here with your questions.”

“Why did it need protection?” Kane asked, and suddenly he didn’t want to hear the answer.

“What do you do when a great man sins?” Juan Vyano asked, with a touch of sadness in his voice. “Is any man so great that he is above the law?”

“No.”

“Of course not. And yet, here in our little village, we could not subject our leading citizen—our greatest man—to the shame of a scandal. Just as Captain Pallato had his ways of justice, so did we. Justice was served, and yet the fame of Ramon Mandown lives on.”

“Tell me,” Kane said, putting the gun in his pocket.

“We did not murder Ramon Mandown that night. We were only twelve jurors. Ramon Mandown was tried, convicted and executed for the murder of his wife.”

H
E USED TO PLAY
there often as a child, especially on those summer days when the muggy heat drove others to the beach. Then, scorning their imagined friendships, he hurried over the hill to the grove of towering leafy trees that sheltered the single whitewashed building.

“Why would any boy want to play in an empty zoo?” his mother had asked once; but she never asked it again because she didn’t really care about the answer. She didn’t really care about him.

Once, of course, the zoo had not been empty. It had sheltered a score of various animals during the depression-ridden years, when the city could afford nothing better. Tommy had been so young he could hardly remember those years; hardly remember being pulled along screaming in between his father and mother to see the animals he feared and thus hated.

Perhaps that was why he started going there alone once the animals had been moved to the new, larger zoo across town. He soon learned that the fence was easy to scale, and that a watchman patrolled the grounds periodically at best. Thus he established himself easily as king of the place, walked unafraid between the rows of empty cages with their gradually rusting bars, and even occasionally swung from the bars themselves in an open gesture of defiance.